


We Move Lightly

by Ewebie



Series: Guess My Race Is Run [19]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Greg really just needs a hug, M/M, Surprisingly emotionally literate Mycroft, There is no smut... I'm sorry but use your filthy filthy imaginations, mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:02:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29605677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ewebie/pseuds/Ewebie
Summary: Donovan returned to find him hunched over his keyboard with a “FUCK RIGHT OFF” sign taped to the door. She ignored it, naturally. “Boss?”Sometimes carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders is just too much.
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Series: Guess My Race Is Run [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/877377
Comments: 29
Kudos: 151





	We Move Lightly

**Author's Note:**

> I... cannot blame this on anyone other than myself. This bunny just attacked me out of nowhere and clung onto my brain until I exorcised it.  
> Title from the lyricless track _We Move Lightly,_ by Dustin O'Halloran
> 
> Thanks to Johanna for the on-demand beta work!
> 
> Specific warnings in the end notes.

That he was already in a foul mood went unsaid. Everyone on his team, or who had ever been on his team, or who had managed to cross him at exactly the wrong time knew the week was a lost cause and gave him the widest berth possible. Then again, Greg’s refusal to remain at home or take leave meant that avoiding him all together was impossible. Given the work, the job itself, the world might have been just the tiniest bit better if he bothered to take a proper holiday. Get drunk on too sweet mixed drinks and pass out under a tropical sun; come back grumpy and broke, but tanned and maybe less violently disappointed in humanity.

Instead, he worked overtime. Took on too-long shifts. Picked up cases and paperwork and shite left right and center. Submerged himself in the worst the world had to offer and put up blazing traffic cones of warning around his metaphysical space. He thundered around the Met and crime scenes and London in a way that suited his predictably dark mood, and anyone with any sense stayed away.

After multiple years’ experience with him, Donovan would have handled it on her own. Had there been any choice at all -- and he knew it, down to his marrow -- she would have distracted him with expense reports or rosters and gone out with a pair of constables. But instead, Greg had gotten the call on his way in. He’d beaten SOCO to the scene. He’d taken one quick look and known that the day was more or less over. 

The more statements they took, the more information that came to light, the worse it became. He didn’t want to listen to it anymore, could only muster a blank gaze and vaguely sympathetic sounds. He edged back, pulling further and further into himself, the foreboding silence strangling him slowly. 

He found his line with Anderson, kitted out for the forensics, looking at the body and tsking, “Poor sod.”

Greg left. That he managed to make it to his car without yelling was only down to the fact that he was in public. He drove back to the Met with the radio off, the muffled interior of the car an agitating quiet that allowed his mood to fester. Even the bustle of the bullpen seemed to hesitate when he stomped in. The final straw was Dimmock -- well-meaning idiot, really -- clearing his throat and offering to take the jumper case off of his hands. Greg slammed his office door so hard that files spilled from one of the nearby desks and the windows on the far side of the bullpen rattled.

Donovan returned to find him hunched over his keyboard with a “FUCK RIGHT OFF” sign taped to the door. She ignored it, naturally. “Boss?”

He glared at her. “What?”

She stepped inside, closed the door, and set her jaw. “Give me the statements. I’ll sort them.”

“No.”

“Sir.”

“No, Donovan!”

“Greg, you ha-”

“Piss off!” he snapped. 

“Look,” she crossed her arms over her chest. “I know this is a shite week for you. You know I know. But I ne-”

The phone on his desk rang loudly, interrupting Donovan and perhaps saving her from the absolute bollocking on the tip of his tongue. “Out,” he pointed with the receiver, waiting for her to shut the door before bringing the phone up to his ear. “Lestrade.”

“Detective Inspector.”

He covered his eyes with the palm of his hand. “What, Mycroft?” The stabbing pain behind his left eye flared and he winced. God, this headache was tipping over into a full blown migraine.

“I believe I need a favor.”

He sighed. “Of course you do.”

~

“Ah, Detective Inspector. So glad you could join me.”

He clenched his jaw as Mycroft gestured towards the chair. He was late because of work, because of death and destruction and last minute horrific truths. There were other things in the world than the fucking Holmeses. How dare Mycroft imply anything otherwise!

“Drink?”

“Drink?” He narrowed his eyes at the decanter. It was probably an absurdly expensive whiskey. Some thousand-pound scotch that had been quadruple distilled and casked in truffle barrels. He looked at his watch: half five. How was it only half five? Christ, would this day not end? “I know that most offices close at five, but I’m still at least two hours of paperwork from being done. So no, no thanks. Ta though.”

He could see Mycroft’s mouth twitch, a little thing at the corners, not exactly a smile and definitely not a frown. He clearly wasn’t amused. And with the condescending little head tilt of acknowledgement at the slight, Greg felt his own mouth curl in the beginning of a snarl.

“Of course. My mistake,” Mycroft murmured smoothly, placing his own glass back next to the decanter.

Of course?  _ Of course?! _ As if he didn’t know Greg was still working. As if he hadn’t called, dragged him away from a case for some sort of pedantic, cloak and dagger bullshit. He was up to his eyeballs with the bloke that had up and face planted off the roof, and the other one that had been stabbed, and the gobshite that had run his car into the bollards because he was drunk off his face and injured two pedestrians.

“What do you want, Mycroft?”

What did he ever want? What did anyone want from him in the first place? It wasn’t as if his wife had wanted much in the long run. Just his time. His youth. His money. His soul. The fucking harpie had taken it upon herself to call yesterday. Wish him well on their fifth non-anniversary as she was off to the Canaries with the new adolescent she was calling a boyfriend. And if that wasn’t enough, as if the knife wasn’t deep enough, she wanted more alimony. It would almost be funny if not for the fact that she’d left in the first place.

“I simply wished to check in.”

What had they been thinking -- getting married on Valentine’s Day. Of all the idiotic things… Add to it the bleakness of the season. People were stretched thin after the holidays, clinging by their fingertips to make it to the next paycheque. And it was dark. Overcast, blustery, and sleeting every other day. More car wrecks. More robberies. More violent crimes and domestic violence and suicides. His constables were at each other’s throats. The sergeants were drowning in the paperwork and overtime. Dimmock looked half a minute from taking a swing at Gregson, and while it was never a fight Dimmock would win, Greg would pay what little money he had to see that happen.

“Check in?” He actually growled. 

_ Check In?! _ What was there to check in about?! Sherlock was behaving himself. Living with John. Well minded. In that central London flat. Unlike the absolute kip of a bachelor pad Greg was stuck in. He had an oversized saggy couch and a half mouldy block of cheese waiting for him. If he was lucky, there was still a beer in the fridge. He only would need the one, not like there was anyone waiting there.

He’d been going home to an empty flat for years. It had been months since he’d had a meaningful, non-work exchange with anyone. He was fucking lonely. God, maybe he just needed to get laid. Christ only knew how long it’d been since someone had even looked at him with interest. And no one probably ever would again. Because the longer he was alone, the less appealing he became. He was old. And tired. And a fucking grump. And he’d been grey for years. And what did he even have to show for the years he’d slogged through at the Met? High blood pressure? A few scars and a gammy knee? A bit of PTSD and a week of rage every year? Sad, old, lonely, broke-down copper.

“You have been… busy this week?”

He sucked in a breath. Busy? “Busy…” Oh, had he been busy. People die. People keep dying. And some of them were actually killing themselves. Or each other. It was a non-stop onslaught of the dregs of society, the truth of ‘civilized’ that people were just picked apart, broken into tiny pieces by life. Busy was dire. Busy was seeing his own pain in the faces of others. Busy was thirty seconds from drowning. Choking on reality. Asphyxiating slowly but surely… Busy…

“Lestrade?”

His breathing was wrong. People died for busy. Fuck. He could hear the sound of his ragged breathing in his ears, high and tight over the pounding of his pulse. He was suffocating. Oh God, he couldn’t breathe. The room tilted. Shit. He was hyperventilating. Shit, shit, shit. Even knowing that, there was nothing he could do to stop it. Even recognizing it, his chest was getting tighter by the second. 

The touch startled him violently. Christ, no one had actually put a hand on him in over a month. The shock of the sensation had him jerking his shoulder away instinctively and his back collided with a solid surface hard enough that he flinched. 

Mycroft.

“Greg?”

It was just… Mycroft. For fuck’s sake. Mycroft was standing there with his arms out, watching him warily. Palms up, hands open. No, not warily, concernedly. The body language clicked, and he realised it was a soothing posture, meant to be calming, non-threatening even. It looked horribly out of place on Mycroft; that only made it more distressing.

He blinked and heaved a breath. Brought his arms back down from their defensive position. What was he going to do anyway? Punch him? People were probably disappeared for less. He closed his eyes and slumped, letting the wall catch the back of his head with a thud. His shoulders were up around his ears and he couldn’t seem to slow his heart rate back down. He’d be shaking in a moment.

“Greg, I’m going to place my hand on your shoulder.”

It was a gentle weight, but it nearly knocked him to his knees. Mycroft’s palm was warm enough to soak through multiple layers of fabric as it rested on his shoulder. It couldn’t be burning his skin, could it? His face pulled in a flinch and when he swallowed, his throat clicked.

“Breathe, Gregory.”

Mycroft’s thumb dragged softly along his collar bone. Rhythmically. And it took him far too long to realize it was keeping time. Quietly slowing his breath to something reasonable. Metronomic. Mollifying. He almost didn’t notice the deft fingers at his collar, loosening his tie, releasing the first two buttons -- almost.

“I assure you, I am not taking liberties.”

He’d meant to laugh. To give a wry huff. Reassure and break the tension. It came out more like a whimper. He would have hidden his face behind his palms, but in the moment, his arms were too heavy to lift and Mycroft’s hand on the back of his neck had already drawn him forward with a steady pressure until his cheek was tucked against Mycroft’s collar.

It should have been overwhelming -- too much physical contact after a lonesome drought of touch starvation -- but the steady strength of Mycroft’s frame supporting him, the smell of clean laundry and cologne, and the feel of carefully manicured nails scraping through the hair at the nape of his neck was just on the right side of comforting. His whole body sagged in exhaustion, and without any conscious thought, he was clinging to the back of Mycroft’s jacket to keep from crumpling to the floor.

“Breathe.”

The hand that wasn’t in his hair was smoothing across his shoulders, slow and calming. 

“You’re safe.”

The relief was so acute, so profound, that it felt as though he was cracking open. He was going to cry. He hadn’t cried in years, and he could feel the sting in the corner of his eyes, the burning in his throat, the heaviness with his wet inhale. If he noticed how close to tears Greg had come, Mycroft held his silence, breathing deeply and evenly until Greg had managed to calm down.

“There.”

It was a soft brush of lips, the lightest pressure against the crown of his head, there and gone before he even recognised it. Maybe he imagined it. He was on shaky enough ground as the stress of panic ebbed, leaving him unsteady and tremulous.

“Come sit.”

He was safely seated without much input, his limbs not quite back online yet, and a glass of water appeared in his hands. He sipped at it carefully, the mortification from his outburst and breakdown settling in his gut with a nauseating weight. The moment he could trust his voice, even before he could bear to lift his eyes, he croaked out a rough sorry.

Mycroft settled a respectable distance from him on the sofa. “Whatever do you have to apologise for?”

God, all of it. He was in such a miserable state that he never bothered to find out what Mycroft had wanted in the first place. And then he nearly threw a punch… “Don’t think that’s really what you had in mind when you called me to your office.”

A soft hum preceded Mycroft’s next words. “And if it was?”

He scraped a hand through his hair. Mycroft Holmes was being polite. Never in a thousand years would he have wanted Greg to have a surprise panic attack in the middle of his office and cry on him. It definitely wasn’t what Greg had wanted. “It’s not.”

“Forgive me, but I believe it actually was my intention to check in with you and perhaps share a drink. I was aware you were struggling this week, and I’m not blind to the annual pattern. I did hope to ameliorate the clearly spiraling anxiety, but I was, unfortunately, delinquent in my invitation.”

Greg pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead as his brain took an extra second to translate Mycroft’s words. Then somehow, he was speaking without giving his mouth permission to start. “What? Why?” 

“Because I like you. And I dislike seeing you distressed.”

This time he kept words from escaping with a large gulp of water. Distressed was an understatement. How did he let himself get into such a state every year?  _ Every year! _ Last year, he’d let an old schoolmate convince him to pick up boxing again to try to clear his head. None of it worked. And none of it made him remotely likeable. When the extra processing didn’t help, he shook his head and groaned. “You can’t… You can’t like me.”

“Why on Earth not?”

“Look at me,” he hung his head and muttered at the floor. It was a daunting invitation. When Mycroft Holmes looked, he well and truly looked. There were things that man could see that people had buried beneath years of baggage. Now Greg, numpty that he was, was just going to let him pick apart what was left of the wreckage of his life? “I’m a mess.” 

The water glass was plucked from his grasp and he instantly wanted it back, frowning at the way his empty hands trembled.

“Perhaps,” Mycroft murmured, placing the glass out of the way, “I like mess.”

Greg snorted, eyeing the fastidiously neat office around them. Mycroft was precise. Immaculate and orderly. Maybe a bit fussy. In the years he’d known him, Greg had only seen Mycroft look disheveled on a handful of occasions -- and if your brother landing in the ICU isn’t a reason for that, Greg didn’t know what was. Meanwhile, hardly a day went by that Greg didn’t end up with coffee on his tie, mud on his shoes, rain in his hair, or creases in his suit. He was a walking human disaster.

“Gregory, I am a politician by choice, working in a highly disorganised government. Do you not think I could find another career?”

Greg bobbed his head in acknowledgement. Of course he could. There had been so many times that Greg had wondered why Mycroft even bothered. He could have made millions in finance, and if he’d opted to go into business, God help anyone that stood in his way. 

“I have a chaotic calamity of a brother, whom I adore.”

He tried not to be stunned by the confession. Mycroft didn’t talk about Sherlock like that. He didn’t really talk about anything like that. He was demonstrably concerned at all times, but to say it out-loud? The earnestly soft look on Mycroft’s face was overwhelmingly convincing.

“How could I admire you any less? Because you’ve not led a charmed life? Because you have bad days that make you irrational at times? Because the efforts of your labour sometimes leave you rumpled?”

To hear it put so candidly… Mycroft didn’t mince words when it didn’t suit him, and to say that he admired Greg…  _ Admire.  _ He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Greg was blushing; he could feel the heat spreading up the back of his neck and out to the tips of his ears. Rumpled?! “Mycroft…”

He lifted a brow. “Do not suggest I don’t know my own mind. It’s insulting.”

The phrasing and delivery, the mildly aggravated expression, it was so quintessentially Mycroft that Greg had to laugh. And this time it was a laugh, deep and free, and escaping with half the weight in his chest. “Sorry. Sorry,” he ran a hand over his mouth. He wasn’t good at accepting compliments. And he’d never been quick to trust affection. “God, sorry. I didn’t mean to… Imply…”

“Oh, no. Laughter is obviously the response I desired.”

Christ, he wasn’t laughing at Mycroft. He wasn’t. It was the whole damn situation. It was just too surreal. Not just cracking in the middle of Mycroft’s office, but being consoled and even flattered after the fact. “Myc.” He bit down on his lip for a moment. 

Mycroft smoothed an imaginary crease from the leg of his trousers. “Yes?”

“I already told you, I'm a mess. Jesus, I just cried on your suit. Which is totally the last thing I’d think to try to impress a bloke I’m into. And somehow that… Worked… For you…” He snapped his mouth shut. Shit. He’d up and said that out-loud. Just let it slip out that he was trying to impress Mycroft. He was  _ always _ trying to impress Mycroft. He never thought it would actually work.

“Well…” Mycroft pursed his lips and shifted, fidgeting far more than was characteristic. “You have yet to object.”

“I…” Oh God. There was the finest dusting of pink across Mycroft’s cheeks. He was… flattered? Maybe? And he wasn’t objecting to Greg’s insinuation either, which was a good thing. Taking quick stock, to be sure, Greg ticked off the things he now knew. One, he himself was a mess and he’d proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Mycroft liked mess and admired Greg, either because of or in spite of any efforts on Greg’s part, and openly stated as much. And Greg had bumblingly returned the sentiment. Well fuck. Meanwhile, Mycroft could probably read every half-thought as it painted itself across his face.

“Now that we have clarified the issue at hand,” Mycroft cleared his throat. 

He took a deep and steadying breath. Now… What now? He had a few hours of paperwork left to tackle. He should probably do something about the adrenaline crash headache that was due any minute now. Get home and lick his proverbial wounds. Maybe redo the buttons on his shirt and straighten his tie; anything to not look quite the disaster he felt.

“Drink?”

Greg lifted his eyes with incredulity. A drink? Now? After all of… Whatever the hell had just happened? That was probably the last thing he needed, and somehow the most important. “Here?”

“Of course.”

He studied Mycroft’s face, the small, nearly invisible, blink-and-you’d-miss-them tells apparent after the strange intensity of their exchange. He wasn’t offering to be polite, Mycroft wanted him to stay. And the office was quiet. Calm. Private. He felt a slow smile stretch across his face. “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be nice.”

**Author's Note:**

> * Vague descriptions of off camera violence and references to suicide.  
> * The Ex-Mrs-Lestrade doesn't sound very nice here.  
> * There is a very distinct thought pattern of spiraling into an anxiety attack, so if that's too much, I understand. (There is some lovely and careful care though.)


End file.
